The HotSpot - 07/20/2005
Transcript 00:01 from San Francisco gamespot presents the 00:05 hot spot and now here's your host master 00:09 rich gala blow everyone welcome to the 00:12 first podcast in the history of GameSpot 00:14 I'm rich gal hosting the hot spot with 00:17 me today we have Greg kassahun babka 00:19 like oh and Jeff Gerstmann how you doing 00:21 fellas pretty good cool this is your 00:23 weekly wrap-up for all the hot news 00:25 going on in the gaming industry so let's 00:27 just jump right into a shall we sure 00:29 sounds good let's go grand theft auto 00:30 san andreas for people that don't know 00:32 has recently been revealed that there is 00:34 a minigame hidden deep within the bowels 00:36 of grand theft auto san andreas it's in 00:38 the pc version it's in the playstation 2 00:40 version it's probably in the xbox 00:42 version it was unlocked by a modern in 00:44 europe what's going on now Jeff you know 00:47 basically this this hot coffee things 00:48 real crazy it basically in the game you 00:52 can go on dates and eventually if you 00:54 progress far enough with these ladies 00:56 they'll invite you inside the game as it 00:58 shipped basically doesn't show any 01:01 sequence you go inside the house you 01:02 hear some some muffled moaning and you 01:04 know it's kind of implied what's going 01:06 on but apparently at some point they had 01:08 plans to actually take you inside the 01:10 house and show this stuff off though the 01:13 characters are kind of fully clothed 01:14 it's obviously like a like an unfinished 01:16 part of the game that they sort of 01:18 started developing and then said now 01:19 let's not go in that direction but all 01:22 that stuff remain on the disk so now if 01:24 you know where to look and can find 01:26 codes and stuff you can unlock that 01:27 stuff and and get to get to it Greg it's 01:31 been getting a lot of publicity in the 01:32 press politicians are getting involved 01:34 is this getting way out of hand it seems 01:37 like it is I mean again it's people are 01:40 using it as an excuse to talk about you 01:43 know how video games are clearly the 01:45 root of all society's problems and you 01:48 know Grand Theft Auto used to get a lot 01:49 of flack for being too violent now it's 01:51 on the other side of society's vices so 01:56 it's it's pretty much God at all now the 01:59 the content itself is questionable and 02:02 the the situation is more complicated 02:04 now because the the statement issued by 02:07 rock stars is that you know they got 02:09 hacked and this content was basically 02:11 put into the game but 02:13 that's been shown to be fairly 02:15 misleading actually it's quite clear 02:17 that this content was deliberately put 02:20 into the game but you know as to what it 02:24 all means uh it's still undecided yet 02:27 but I think people are kind of sick of 02:29 hearing about it and there and they're 02:30 decided that life's gonna have to go on 02:32 and this games been out for months and 02:35 months already right so will there be 02:36 any long-lasting Ram ramifications from 02:39 this is the ESRB going to take some 02:40 flack for making an M rated game or 02:42 ratings gonna change legislation passed 02:44 there they're taking a lot of flak and 02:46 there's talk of like government 02:48 regulation and so forth but it's just 02:51 hard to see exactly how logistical e 02:54 that would work and and I think if 02:56 anything it's just gonna cause the ESRB 02:59 to try to be even more careful and 03:01 ultimately you know as messy as this 03:03 whole thing is maybe it's for the best 03:05 just as far as like getting more of this 03:08 information out there to people and I I 03:09 think anyone who does even a basic level 03:12 of research about the facts of the 03:14 matter realizes that it's not 03:16 necessarily the end of the world and 03:18 it's not little Johnny you know learning 03:21 how to perpetrate these horrible crimes 03:23 and and so forth yeah the thing with 03:25 this is is you know having having seen 03:27 that stuff and hearing the out cries 03:29 like oh the Indian rear eight this is a 03:31 oh it's like none of that stuff really 03:33 looks that dramatic like it would need 03:35 to be a rating change I mean look at God 03:37 of War for the ps2 that's another game 03:39 that has sexual oriented minigames right 03:42 there in it including topless women M 03:45 rated game no problem so this is just a 03:47 situation where people i think got 03:49 surprised and and you know they're 03:51 trying to lash out at it basically i get 03:53 the feeling that politicians have been 03:54 gunning for GTA for so long now that now 03:56 they finally feel like oh we got them 03:58 and they're just trying to escape goat 04:01 it out and and and you know elections 04:03 are coming up right it's true it's true 04:05 someone's got to find hot button issue 04:06 so we'll give hot coffee a hot this week 04:09 i'm sure we'll be talking about it again 04:10 very soon EA stock price let's move on 04:13 it's holding steady and that they 04:16 announced that the godfather is going to 04:17 be delayed stock prices went down then 04:19 they announced that they'll be 04:20 distributing half-life 2 and it went 04:23 back up what's going on downey a bob 04:25 well basically 04:26 it's more what's going on in Wall Street 04:28 people are starting to pay a lot at 04:31 least people in the who follow games are 04:33 starting to pay more attention to the 04:34 business aspects of it and so all of a 04:37 sudden what used to be somewhat 04:39 innocuous announcements about the game 04:41 being pushed back a few months here 04:42 there has a you know bigger 04:44 ramifications beyond you having to wait 04:47 a few more weeks until you can go buy in 04:49 the store so will this lead to what I 04:52 believe is greg's great hope in that the 04:54 games industry becomes more like the 04:56 movie industry and that we get actual 04:57 firm release dates well in advance my I 05:01 think that's definitely what the 05:03 evidence points to I mean you've got 05:06 this clear cause and effect relationship 05:08 where a release date was announced the 05:10 release date slipped and basically 05:12 punishment was served up the message is 05:15 is quite apparent there it's like when 05:18 you announce a release date you better 05:19 make it serious though in this case it's 05:22 also interesting that I don't know I 05:23 think it reinforces sort of a negative 05:26 trend here where which is that like your 05:29 game has to come out in the fall or 05:31 holiday release season in order to be a 05:34 big seller which is ridiculous the years 05:37 12 months long last time I checked any 05:40 people are interested in playing great 05:42 games any time of the year I mean like 05:43 this week it is a great example is to 05:45 you know kind of the the disparate 05:48 release calendar there are no xbox game 05:50 shipping this week they're like four 05:51 games in total coming out this week you 05:53 know there could be a big game right now 05:55 and it would eat up everyone's time 05:56 because there's nothing else big coming 05:58 out so it seems like they could you know 06:00 shake things up a bit with the way games 06:03 are released and maybe get a spotlight 06:05 on games that might not get it otherwise 06:07 all right moving on microsoft security 06:09 recently in gamespot's own forums a 06:11 young guy took pictures of him playing 06:15 his stepdads xbox 360 that his dad to 06:19 bring home for his job purposes to test 06:21 what's going on guys is he the first 06:24 grounded exactly yeah basically that's 06:27 that kids in a lot of trouble and 06:28 somebody's fired from there yeah more or 06:31 less it sounds like that kid kind of got 06:33 freaked out towards the end and actually 06:34 asked us to remove it 06:36 from the forums so maybe he realized 06:39 towards the tail end of that oh man what 06:41 the hell have I done so I so it's out of 06:44 the forms but it is its own spot news 06:46 ever lower here now you're looking 06:48 forward yeah well someone had the common 06:50 decency to block out the kids face the 06:51 original shots didn't didn't have that 06:54 but they didn't block out his hair one 06:57 boy was a haircut man whatever he's 06:59 still collecting royalties from so I 07:00 married an axe murderer I think yeah 07:02 long as it keeps the hair so did we 07:04 learn anything new about the xbox 360 07:06 from this leak um basically he didn't 07:09 have any games to try out with it but he 07:11 talked a lot about the front end 07:12 features and and basically we learned 07:14 that this guy thinks they're cool okay 07:16 that's uh that's more or less and 07:18 there's lots of wires hanging out of 07:20 right yeah presumably he was doing 07:22 electrical testing to make sure that is 07:24 they blow up you know like like ul 07:25 testing or something yeah and they're 07:28 they're making sure that it's not gonna 07:29 catch fire so there's much wires hanging 07:31 out for hooking up different probably 07:33 voltage tester me that explains the hair 07:35 maybe yeah I guess alright moving on 07:39 Majesco is fortunes cold their stock 07:42 price has gone down their CEO left town 07:44 no one's buying psychonauts advertising 07:46 wasn't as good as they host man Majesco 07:49 is kind of a weird story because they 07:50 really seemed like they were on the 07:52 verge of turning things around Anna you 07:54 know maybe moving up to kind of a next 07:56 level in the the video game publisher 07:58 world they a lot of really exciting 08:00 games and at the end of the day you know 08:02 they just didn't pan out and didn't sell 08:04 for him so you know that it's kind of a 08:06 tough break tough break because I mean 08:08 psychonauts is a great game advent 08:10 rising not so great of a game but hey 08:13 they you know they gave it the old 08:15 college try with that one and yeah they 08:18 I definitely agree they look like they 08:20 were on the up and up there for a while 08:22 they picked up a developer starbreeze to 08:25 do that game the darkness after writer 08:27 starbies did such a great job with the 08:29 chronicles of riddick last year so they 08:31 they seemed like they were making really 08:33 good calls and and then uh yeah things 08:35 just turned sour and I guess it's it's 08:37 just sort of a grim reminder that this 08:40 is a real high stakes game at this point 08:42 and you gotta gotta play some really big 08:44 bets but there there's just no guarantee 08:47 that they're gonna pay off well here's 08:49 my here's Michael 08:50 then it seems like more and more reading 08:52 the headlines again spot news that we're 08:53 hearing news on stock prices going up 08:56 and down is this a sign is this new to 08:59 the game industry our stock trading 09:02 something that all these companies 09:03 haven't had to deal with before it's I 09:05 wouldn't call it new but it's definitely 09:06 something that people are taking a 09:08 longer and harder look at for the simple 09:10 fact that there's just a lot more money 09:12 in this business than there used to be 09:13 you know it's uh what do they keep 09:15 saying it's bigger than Hollywood is big 09:17 earning more money than the box office 09:19 does well it's like wherever there's 09:20 money like that there comes increased 09:22 interest from people that have no 09:25 interest in the quality of the games 09:26 ultimately they just are looking at 09:28 these cold numbers and trying to figure 09:30 out you know where they can make money 09:31 so so a 16 million predicted profit 09:35 turned into a 16 million dollar you know 09:38 loss all sudden your stock price cut in 09:40 half executives running away as I can 09:43 maybe they're going to play psychonauts 09:45 yeah maybe they should oh yeah speaking 09:49 of people heading for the hills midway 09:51 in San Diego they were recently lost 09:53 John Romero mm-hmm notorious game 09:56 developer I will say sure and je Sawyer 09:59 who are these guys Bob get us started 10:01 why they leave what's going on well of 10:04 course no one's saying on the record you 10:07 know why exactly they left but John 10:09 Romero did you know it was learned that 10:11 he left last week and then this week you 10:15 know they got there's more bad news for 10:17 that studio that je Sawyer has also left 10:21 the same studio and they're both working 10:22 on the same project gauntlet seven 10:25 sorrows J Sawyer went back to basically 10:28 his old mates from Black Isle who were 10:30 mostly at obsidian entertainment now 10:32 he's going to be you know developing 10:34 more more traditional role playing games 10:36 as opposed to gauntlet which is you know 10:39 much more action-oriented yeah he's onto 10:41 neverwinter nights 2 and then Romero's 10:43 plans I don't think have been revealed 10:46 at this point hopefully keeping his hair 10:48 looking awesome John Romero has been 10:51 known for quite some time he was 10:52 obviously one of the original creators 10:53 of doom mm-hmm but his career has been 10:56 kind of in flux for several years yeah 10:59 so this really isn't that much of a 11:01 surprise that he's moving on 11:02 my right yeah it's a genre has been been 11:05 everywhere done a whole bunch of 11:06 different stuff and yeah not not that 11:09 big of a surprise Midway for their party 11:11 said that the development of gauntlet 11:12 won't be impacted by their departure so 11:14 maybe their part on the game was already 11:16 done or you know maybe they just didn't 11:19 like the direction it was moving in and 11:20 again quietly left it's hard to say what 11:24 exactly happened but yeah you know be 11:26 interesting to see how gauntlet turns 11:27 out I guess cool we'll find out soon 11:29 enough i think it's come out of this 11:30 ball right yep as well as every other 11:32 game currently in development excited 11:33 godfather except for God all right so 11:36 all right as Rafi and inflation very hot 11:39 right now in the land of World of 11:41 Warcraft I guess I should just say in 11:43 the world of warcraft right now Bob 11:45 there's a little bit of cheating going 11:47 on what's up basically what happened was 11:50 a duping bug was found in the game and 11:52 what that basically means is that people 11:54 are using sheisty means in order to 11:56 create the copies of their you know 11:59 magical swords and and you know glinting 12:02 armor or whatever and also their money 12:05 and you know if you're creating like 12:08 multiple copies of stuff that's supposed 12:10 to be rare as well as your money you're 12:11 basically creating inflation in the 12:13 economy and you know that basically 12:16 could break the game if blizzard doesn't 12:19 step in and somehow put this in check so 12:21 Jeff world of warcraft mists gamespot's 12:23 game of the year last year a very 12:25 popular massively multiplayer online 12:26 role-playing game is cheating like this 12:29 a normal thing in genre it's a thing 12:32 that happens it you know you always have 12:34 people that are looking for that little 12:35 edge and and commonly the cheating is 12:38 that people are out there spending real 12:40 money for these items you know they're 12:42 they're auction sites set up and you 12:45 know some of the auctions creep through 12:46 on ebay where people are selling pull 12:47 characters or selling rare items or just 12:50 straight up selling gold so you know all 12:52 that stuff works to kind of unbalanced 12:54 the economy probably as the game 12:56 developers intended it but something 12:58 like this has the potential to do a 13:00 whole lot of damage really fast so 13:01 Blizzard really doesn't need to step in 13:03 and presumably when it comes to stuff 13:05 like this you know they are keeping 13:06 track of items to the level where 13:09 probably each one has an individual ID 13:11 number so that's probably getting 13:12 duplicated too so as soon as they can 13:14 kind of 13:15 pour over their data figure out what 13:17 went wrong close the hole in the game 13:19 then they can start working on you know 13:21 what they want to do to these people if 13:23 they want to ban them if they want to 13:24 remove all those items from the game but 13:26 of course some of those items have been 13:27 sold to unsuspecting honest players so 13:30 what are you do in that case do you 13:31 punish the honest players to do you roll 13:34 it back so they get their money back i 13:35 mean there's a bunch of different 13:37 options that they have to weigh and 13:38 consider and try and pick the one that's 13:40 going to fix the problem while impacting 13:43 the honest players of the game as 13:44 minimally as possible Greg are you 13:47 confident Blizzard can fix this problem 13:48 is this going to ruin the game forever 13:50 you know they're they're no strangers to 13:53 cheating in their games they're they're 13:55 probably one of the most experienced 13:57 companies at dealing with these sorts of 13:59 messes though at the same time this is 14:00 probably one of the bigger such messes 14:03 that they've encountered just because 14:04 world of warcraft has what more than two 14:06 million subscribers now so when we refer 14:09 to the game's economy it's got a real 14:11 economy that's probably bigger than that 14:13 of some third-world countries so it 14:15 really is kind of a serious problem that 14:18 that they have to treat very very 14:21 carefully so the good news is that they 14:24 they've handled this sort of thing 14:25 before but that probably doesn't make it 14:27 any easier to take care of well I think 14:29 that's going to do it for this week 14:30 fellas thanks for coming by Greg Bob 14:32 Jeff appreciate it and you listening if 14:35 you want more on the latest news reviews 14:37 previews hints guys and movies from the 14:39 oil game and go to gamespot com and 14:41 we'll see you back here next week for 14:44 more information on these or any other 14:46 topics relating to the world of gaming 14:48 check out gamespot com 14:53